Who remembers these?

It's really cool to see how far things have come. I did far more console gaming up until college so I wasn't as deep into the video cards as most.

My list consists of:
IBM 486 - Hand-me-down and I don't think it had any 3D capability
Cyrix based computer which could barely handle a cd writer
HP PIII 16 MB NVidia TNT2-Pro with TV-Out
Then I started college and began to build*
PIV I think a 4400ti?
PIV Agp based 9800 pro that fried, replaced with 6800 ultra
AMD X2 3800 pci-e 7800gtx sli
AMD FX60 x1900xtx? cf
E6600 8800gtx
Q6600 4870 x2
Q9650 " "
E8400 9800gtx sli
PII 965 6870
2500k/2600k 6870

I kind of wish I had held onto some of this old hardware, it would be fun to mess with now days.
 
Damn your old :p , my first GPU was an EVGA 9800GTX+ , still running in my aunt's PC. Then a GTX 275,then CF 5870's, and finally SLI 460.
 
Adzsask said:
Damn your old :p , my first GPU was an EVGA 9800GTX+ , still running in my aunt's PC. Then a GTX 275,then CF 5870's, and finally SLI 460.
Click to expand...

Good god, that was recent. How old are you? My first graphics card had less than a MB of RAM, fit in an ISA slot (you obviously don't remember those) and didn't do 3D anything. All our games back then were sprite based graphics and bit maps.
 
EBruddah said:
Let's take it back before the good ole TNT2 even before the TNT

Who remembers the Matrox Mystique?

Mystique.jpg


I remember rocking this w/an OC'd Pentium 133 w/64MB of RAM!
Click to expand...

i had a couple Matrox G400 duelhead cards back in the day. My friends we're so stoked to see 2 monitors hooked up to my computer, wasn't worth much for gaming though :mad:
 
Adzsask said:
Damn your old :p , my first GPU was an EVGA 9800GTX+ , still running in my aunt's PC. Then a GTX 275,then CF 5870's, and finally SLI 460.
Click to expand...

Me? I'm 28, I just started messing with computers pretty early.
 
I first got hooked on Age of Empires (thankfully no graphics card needed) and SNES emulators.

Once I got my own PC I started playing FPS games and Elderscrolls and MIST. First GPU was a 7600GT for $150 (o.0) I was pumped to go from 30FPS at lowest settings (with max resolution) to 100FPS...kinda funny how pathetic that seems now XD
 
I THINK the first video card I purchased (well, purchased for me as I was something like 8) was the S3 801 so I could play Tie Fighter (game is still awesome :D)

First computer was a Tandy 4000. When the floppy drive broke they told us it would probably be cheaper to simply buy a new computer. The good ol' days.
 
First card I purchased was a 9600 pro (9800 pro was higher version correct?)
 
Lets see if I can remember all this...

- I started out with a 286, video card negligible. (commander keen, prince of persia!)

- Then we had a P1, 166mhz, it came with an S3 Virge or something like that?
- Same computer got upgraded with a voodoo2 add on card, man was that neat!

- Then I got a P3 coppermine, 800mhz, don't know what card or onboard that came with...
- Put a GeForce 2 MX in that, it was nothing impressive really...

- Then came my first custom built PC (AMD 3200+, s754), ran a 9800pro in that, loved that thing! Especially because it was originally a 9100 that I had to RMA twice... Loud fan problems.

Now you probably find yourself wondering whats next? There isn't... Haha. I've been running my laptop (sig) exclusively for the past 2 years. Because I do mostly web design and movie watching on my computer.
 
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My school started with Apple II and Franklin, a bunch of 8088 and C-64.

My first PC was a Commodore 128. It took quite a while for me to go x86. My first x86 PC was a Acer Pentium II with an ATI rage pro and windows 98.
 
Yeah, I remember my IBM 8086. It was badass to upgrade to a 16 color CGA card and monitor. Oh, and no hard drive. Loaded everything from 5.25 floppies. DOS and a 30 pound binder with commands.
 
Like the vast majority here this thread make me feel old, but I have to say the biggest 'WOW' for me was when I had an AMD-K6-2 400mhz cpu + a matrox 400 linked too a Voodoo2 card. My friend helped me build it and the first thing I installed was unreal tournament. I still remember seeing the flyby (the mansion/castle at the beginning) and just did this :eek: for about 5 minutes. I was hooked since then. I am familiar with every card in the OP in some way or another. Anyone remember the voodoo rush (first 2d+3d hybrid)? It was decent but the dedicated cards blew it out of the water.
 
ATI 7500 64mb PCI - This was my first real purchase for my pc. I had a budget pc built by a local company. It was a AMD Duron +1200 with 512mb of ram. It was a little underpowerd for its time (2002) but I wasn't much into pc gaming and I didn't have any money. I got the 7500 because the card that was in there only had 4mb of memory and I needed 16 for Ghost Recon (the game that broke me into pc gaming).

ATI 9200 128mb AGP - I needed more speed. I knew this would be an ok upgrade.

Nvidia 5200 256mb AGP - I wanted more speed, but at the time I was one of those people who was in the mindframe of more memory = better card. Little did I know that the 5200 was a side step (or even a step down). Either way, the extra memory DID help a little with Joint Operations.

ATI 9600xt AGP - At this point I was educated about video cards and wanted a good card that wouldn't brake my empty wallet. I LUSTED after the 9800xt and 5950, but settled for this 9600xt knowing it was a good card. This was my favorite card to date. It just played everything I wanted.

Nvidia 6600gt - Bought off ebay. Had artifacts on boot up. Sent back.

Nvidia 6800 - Decided to just pay a little more and get a good card. Went with the 6800 non gt. This card was ok but I had issues with it because my power supply was just some no name piece of crap that came with my generic Chinese case. The case had LEDs and at the time, that meant your system was the shit. I blamed the card for the issues but in retrospect im sure it was the 250w power supply (that was probably really just a 125w anyways).

Ati x800 Pro - At this point I was misinformed and hated Nvidia because of my 6800 issues. My power supply kicked the bucket so I needed a new one and I decided to go ATI. This was probably my 2nd favorite video card of all time. AMAZING for the money. I redid my system and got an AMD 64 +3000 to go along with it.

Ati x700 - Bills to pay, sold the x800 Pro and got the x700 super cheap. Ghost Recon went down the crapper with the sequels and I didn't play Joint Ops anymore. I loved my PS2 and Xbox so I just bought a placeholder.

850xt - I bought this just for fun. It was another card I lusted over and Newegg had a great open box deal on it that I couldn't turn down. Caps broke off and the card was unfixable.

Nvidia 7600gt (2 in sli) - Got these as payment for doing some rendering for a guy. Worked great but wanted t a single card solution.

Ati x1900gt - Just started playing wow and I didn't want to screw around with SLI anymore. Bought this card after reading good reviews. It was the 2nd edition and maxed out wow just fine. I also got my first LCD screen (19" samsung widescreen).

Nvidia 8800gts 320mb - I was working at PC Club when this came out. I still remember hearing rumors about how there would be a budget 8800 series card coming out. I bought the first one that was put on our shelf. My 3nd favorite video card ever. Also was the time I upgraded to a Core 2 Duo e6300 system.

ATI 4870 512mb - I really enjoyed this card. I am probably going to pick one up for my wifes system. I gave the Core 2 Duo to my wife and went with the quad core im running today.

ATI 6950 2gb - Got this as a Christmas gift from my wife. The rest of my system was holding me back at this point. I realized that it was a good card but it was overkill for my system. A few months after I got it, I won a gtx460 from a work raffle and decided that I was going to sell my 6950 and wait off for a new system build and the 7 series.

Nvidia gtx460 - The love Asus and I love this card but I really wish that my system was a little more equipped for 1920x1080. When Ivory Bridge comes out, im going to upgrade to that and see how the video card lineup stacks up then. My current system will go to my wife, her system will go to my mom (who is running a 2ghz P4 system).
 
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Sunnyd514 said:
Like the vast majority here this thread make me feel old, but I have to say the biggest 'WOW' for me was when I had an AMD-K6-2 400mhz cpu + a matrox 400 linked too a Voodoo2 card. My friend helped me build it and the first thing I installed was unreal tournament. I still remember seeing the flyby (the mansion/castle at the beginning) and just did this :eek: for about 5 minutes. I was hooked since then. I am familiar with every card in the OP in some way or another. Anyone remember the voodoo rush (first 2d+3d hybrid)? It was decent but the dedicated cards blew it out of the water.
Click to expand...

The reminded me, I had an Athlon Thunderbird with 128mb ram and a Riva TNT2 that I used to play hours of Unreal Tournament on, I would shoot at bots for hours with dual pistols on that map that has that runway waaaay down below, anyone know what that map is called again?
 
Not one mention of installing a math co-processor or upgrading the L2 cache on a motherboard. :(

First system I had was when I was 12... We got a computer for Christmas... it sported a 386sx-25, 5.25" and 3.5" floppies, a 120MB hdd, 4MB RAM, and a 1MB Trident video card. sound was through the PC speaker.

It came with DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.0.

That sucker cost over 2 grand when it was new.

Those were the days.
 
cyclone3d said:
Not one mention of installing a math co-processor or upgrading the L2 cache on a motherboard. :(

First system I had was when I was 12... We got a computer for Christmas... it sported a 386sx-25, 5.25" and 3.5" floppies, a 120MB hdd, 4MB RAM, and a 1MB Trident video card. sound was through the PC speaker.

It came with DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.0.

That sucker cost over 2 grand when it was new.

Those were the days.
Click to expand...

Oh no, I've done it. Believe me I've installed L2 cache on more boards than I can remember. I've also done the math-co processor bit as well.
 
Yeah well I had an Altair 8800...

It didn't even have a display. Just a bunch of switches.
 
@lloose
when I had the 9800pro was the last time I was able to play anything I threw at it, just like your 9600xt it is my favorite card to date and I still have it.
 
starting in late 89:
Trident 8700 - ISA
Tseng ET4000 - ISA
Tseng ET4000/w32p - VESA Local bus
Ark Logic something or other - PCI
Tseng ET6000 - PCI, later added Voodoo II - PCI
Voodoo III - AGP
Geforce 3 - AGP

--- up to this point, I only had 1 decent computer at a time, after this I've had 2+ ---

Geforce 4 4400 - AGP (first card to support more than 1 monitor)
Geforce 4 4200 - AGP
Radeon 9800 - AGP
Matrox G200 - PCI (bought used for use in a file server)
Geforce 6 6800GT - PCIe

--- all PCIe from this point

Geforce 8800gts g92 512m x 2 (SLIed)
Geforce 8800gt 512m
Geforce 9600gt 512m x 2 (in separate systems)
Geforce 9600gso
lots of lots of motherboards and laptops with various onboard graphics, mostly AMD
Radeon 4850x2 (4x DL DVI in one PCIe slot)
Radeon 5870 2gb toxic
Radeon 5870 2gb eyefinity 6 (first displayport card, first to support 6 monitors in one slot)
The 2 5870s started out separate, but are currently crossfired.

The ET4000 was actually a big upgrade from the Trident card, it had a way faster framebuffer. The other Tseng cards were also tops in their day for DOS graphics performance, both VGA, and SVGA. Ark logic had good DOS performance but was much slower in Windows than the last 2 Tseng cards on the list.

The Voodoo II was awesome for quake and Unreal. The III was a bit better, especially in Windows.

Geforce 3, the voodoo cards were a little aged and I needed something a little more modern.

Geforce 4 was a nice step up, and running 2 monitors off of it was really nice. I used the 4400 almost continuously for ~7 years.
9800 another nice step up, made Farcry great.
6800 was nice for a while, but Crysis was only barely playable.
4850x2 - I hope the 7xxx series has something comparable.
5870s - Are nice, but black screen problems with BF2/3 are annoying.

I think I still have possession of every card on the list. Haven't used the older ones in years though.
 
Trident 3D 512KB paired with a 386 and Wolfenstein3D was my first, next to the graphics on an Apple IIe. Good times! :D
 
yowen said:
@lloose
when I had the 9800pro was the last time I was able to play anything I threw at it, just like your 9600xt it is my favorite card to date and I still have it.
Click to expand...

I had the gigabyte model. If I came across one again, I would probably buy it for nostalgia. You got a lot of bang for you buck back then.
 
S3 Trio 64 - Pentium MMX 266MHz

PNY Geforce MX 420 - Pentium 4 2.53GHz Northwood

Compaq Radeon 7500 - Pentium 3 Tualatin 1.13GHz

Powercolor Radeon 9700 PRO - Pentium 4 2.40GHz Northwood

Sapphire Radeon X800XT PE - Pentium 4 3.40GHz Northwood

Gecube Radeon X1950XT AGP - Pentium 4 3.40GHz Northwood and then CT-479 to adapt Pentium M 750 at 2.70GHz. Sexy rig!

HIS Radeon HD 3850 IceQ3 AGP with Pentium M 750 @ 2.70GHz through CT-479

Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 - Intel QX6850 @ 3.60GHz

Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 w/ MSI Radeon HD 4870 CF - Intel Q9650 @ 3.82GHz <<QX6850 too hot for my tastes

Gigabyte Radeon HD 6970 and PNY Verto Geforce GT240 512MB GDDR5 - Intel i7 2600K @ 4.0GHz

Others:

Visiontek Radeon HD 2600XT with Athlon 4000+ <<Backup PC

Generic Geforce 9600GT with Athlon 4000+ <<Backup PC and I used the 9600GT for PhysX on my current and previous system

Powerful Intel GMA 4500M on my beloved Gateway MD7309u which upgraded the CPU to a Intel T9500 2.50GHz

PNY Verto Geforce GT240
 
Ahhhh..the good ole days..........of constantly seeking out the next "latest & greatest" cards to try & get that little extra edge in whatever game was da bomb at the time :)

If only I had all the $$$ I spent on those cards now...............
 
Pitbully said:
Maybe its because I'm getting older or I just don't care anymore but I no longer HAVE to have the latest and greatest hardware or maybe its just because I'm too damn cheap :D
Click to expand...

Remember when there were more graphics players than just Nvidia and AMD/ATI?

I no longer bother trying to have the latest and greatest video card, but not because I'm older, but because games just don't push hardware limits like they use to.
 
adi said:
Matrox Millenium (iirc) tried to break through with bump mapping, which was unfortunately a one trick pony that failed at everything else 3D.
Click to expand...

Its the Matrox millenium G400 you're thinking of and it was a great 3D card, every bit as fast as a TNT2 (in D3D). The main problem was that it didn't ship with an OpenGL ICD... it used a D3D to OpenGL wrapper.... just like the Matrox G200. Once it got the ICD (although it didn't get a full ICD for quite a while) it was an alright OpenGL card too.
 
My Vid History

RIVA TNT 2 ULTRA
Geforce 2 MX440
Geforce 3 Ti 500
Geforce 4 Ti 4200
Geforce 4 Ti 4600
Radeon 9700 PRO
Geforce 5800 ultra
Geforce 5900 Ultra
X800 PRO
7950 GTX 512 MB SLI
8800 GTX SLI
4870 CROSSFIRE
4870 X2 CROSSFIRE
5870 CROSSFIRE
6950 CROSSFIRE CURRENT DAY!


Tip: always sell video card before arrival of new card to get the most out of your profit :)
 
Let's see:

Integrated 386SX
Matrox Millenium 4MB
Creative Labs Nvidia Riva TNT (1s Nvidia Card)
*3dfx Voodoo 3 2000
Gainward Geforce 2 Pro
*Gainward Geforce 2 MX
Power Cooler 9700 Pro (1st ATI Card)
PNY 6800GT
BFG 8800 GT 512mb
Sapphire 4870 512mb
EVGA GTX 280
Sapphire 5870
*XFX 5450 1GB
EVGA GTX 470 SLI
*EVGA GTX 460 + Asus GTX 460 768mb SLI
Sapphire 6950 2GB Crossfire
*Sapphire 6950 2GB Flex Edition
*XFX 6870 1GB Crossfire

* These were always backup cards or cards for secondary systems.
 
My first card was the GeForce 256 32MB. The first thing I did when it was installed was trying Unreal Tournament. Wow. :D

Unfortunately it busted and I replaced it with the ATI Radeon 32MB. I still have it laying around somewhere. :)
 
Guess I'm pretty young compared to the rest of you guys. And I don't upgrade much.

Athlon 750 MHz Slot A
ATI Rage 128 Pro 32MB
GeForce 2 MX 400 32MB

Athlon 64 3200+ S754
Radeon Xpress 200 Integrated
6600gt 128MB
8600gt 256MB

i5-2500k
HD 6850 1GB
 
Lets see, my progression from the time I started building PCs at age 6:

Intel Pentium 200mhz MMX
- S3 Virge 2MB
- Voodoo 3 3000 16MB

AMD Athlon XP 1800+
- Geforce2 MX 32MB
- Geforce 4 TI4600

HP DV7000 Laptop - 3.06Ghz P4 w/ HT
- Geforce 5700M 128MB

AMD Opteron 165
- Geforce 6600GT 256MB

Intel C2Q Q9450
- Geforce 8800GTS 640MB x2 (SLI)
- Geforce GTX260c216

Intel i5 2500k
- Geforce GTX570 (in the mail)
 
My first card was a Tseng Labs ET4000 ...it rocked Fractint pretty well; a Mandelbrot set would only take a minute or two to render in 768 x 1024 16 bit color depth. Obviously this was before the time of 3D engines for gaming.
 
Hercules 2MB EISA - this thing was enormous, probably 12 inches long at least

1 MB PCI S3 Trio64 - interesting thing about this card, it was a lot faster than my ISA card but because the ISA card had more memory i ended up using it more because of higher resolution and more colors

3Dfx Voodoo 4MB (Diamond Multimedia Monster 3D) - my very first 3D card, had this coupled with the 1MB PCI card on my very first own PC, a Pentium 90 w/ 32MBs ram!

Riva TNT 16MB - this replaced the ancient 1MB PCI, still used my 4MB voodoo for glide

2x Voodoo2 12MB - I got these on sale for a very good price at the time (They were Orchid Righteous 3D cards) These coupled with my Riva TNT was a very nice setup for the time

Geforce 256 DDR - I got rid of 3 video cards and replaced them with this! 32MBs of pure gaming goodness, this card cost me $450 at CompUSA, a HUGE amount of money at the time

Geforce 2 Ultra - I had told myself i was going to wait for the Geforce 3 series but when these came out, they had such a performance increase over my now old Geforce that i had to buy one. Ended up skipping the Geforce 3 series all together.

Geforce 4 Ti4600 Ultra - Another super expensive card, but i got a good deal on it, I was working at Circuit City at the time and back then CC let it's employees buy stuff in the store at cost. So while we had it marked for $499 (standard retail price back then) I only paid about $410 for it. It didn't drop below that price until long after that.

Radeon 9800 Pro - Amazing card... to this day i believe this was THE best card for it's time that i've ever owned.

Radeon x1950xtx - This was a beastly card for it's time. Nothing else even came close to it's performance until the 8800GTX Ultra came out.

Geforce 8800GTS (512MB updated version, not the original 640MB version) - nice card but overshadowed just a few months later by the next generation cards

Geforce GTX280 - Got this the same month it was released, paid over $600 for it

Geforce GTX580 - I skipped the entire 4xx series due to heat and power issues and went with this card when it was released. I got a good deal on it due to having $90 in Evga bucks. You still can't buy them new for what i paid for it. This is still my current card.
 
Hmm i think my 486 DX2/66 had a 512k Trident ISA card in it. Before that I'd had a Spectrum 48k, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC-6128 with the colour monitor, Atari ST-520 and finally an Amiga A500 with upgrades (all seemed so grand on a 20" television). I even have an Oric-1 (made before I was born) somewhere in a box with about 30 cassettes!

The DX/2 held me over for ages until I got a Celeron 300 with 64mb ram and some crappy on-board, which I soon swapped out for a 32mb TNT2. This got me more into PC gaming as I'd only played a handful (elite, day of the tentacle, the old SSI D&D games) on my DX/2.

Next came my first home-built system, a K6-2/450 with 128mb ram and a GeForce 256 DDR which was much better for Quake 3. When it went back for RMA I had an original Radeon DDR in there until it came back, was very similar performance iirc. This system got me into hardware.

Gets a bit blurry during the duron and then athlon times, but I owned:
GeForce2 GTS
GeForce3 Ti200
GeForce4 Ti200
Radeon 9700 (and my first aftermarket cooler)
GeForce FX5200 (this was in a 2nd PC, what a junk card)
GeForce 6800GT
GeForce 7800GTX
Radeon X1900XT (first watercooled graphics card, also software vmods. Loved this card)
GeForce 8800GTS (320mb version, in some games it was worse than the X1900XT. Didnt bother to watercool as it was a crap clocker)
Radeon 4870 (512mb version)
GeForce GTX260 (this was in my main rig while the 4870 was in 2nd, had this thing overclocked to 810 core and it would bench at 837)

Currently rocking a GTX580. Sits happily at 950 core but I have several profiles setup as the power isnt needed in a lot of titles.
 
My actual first graphic card remains unknown to me. All I can remember was that it was a DOS system, command prompt and all, I have no idea what are the specifications. What I do know is whatever graphics hardware I had in it, it was good enough to run Xenon 2 in its original color mode.

Never really got into PC until I got my Pentium 3 system, and my dad bought me Serious Sam 1, only to find that I couldn't run it due to the lack of a graphic card. Went to a PC retail store not knowing what I'm really doing, just took my PC along and asked them to find me a suitable graphic card, lol. Thats how I got my GeForce 2 MX 200

Since then I've had:
Radeon 9600 Pro (felt cheated, it was actually a Radeon 9600 Pro GPU but with a slower TSOP RAM than the actual 9600 Pro that uses the newer and faster BGA RAM.
GeForce 6800 vanilla (managed to unlock all pixel shaders)
GeForce 8600 GT
GeForce 9800 GTX+
GeForce GTX 295
 
CGA adapter 8-bit ISA
ATI EGA Wonder 8-bit ISA
ATI VGA Wonder 16-bit ISA
ATI 8514/A 16-bit ISA
ATI Mach32 VESA
ATI Mach64 PCI
ATI RageII PCI
ATI Rage3D 8MB AGP
Voodoo2 12MB
ATI All-in-Wonder Pro AGP
ATI All-in-Wonder 128 AGP
ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon
ATI All-in-Wonder 8500DV AGP
ATI All-in-Wonder 9600XT AGP
ATI X800 256MB PCI-E
ATI 1800XL 256MB PCI-E
ATI 1950Pro 256MB PCI-E
ATI HD3850 512MB PCI-E
ATI HD4870 512MB Crossfire
AMD HD6950 2GB Crossfire
 
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